and many more benefits!

Find us on Facebook

GMAT Club Timer Informer

Hi GMATClubber!

Thank you for using the timer!
We noticed you are actually not timing your practice. Click the START button first next time you use the timer.
There are many benefits to timing your practice, including:

Hi members, it was the end of June when I was shocked with my very first gmat prep experience. I got a 590 in that test & that very result made me realize that I had to work hard & plan more. It was that time when I decided to take leave from workplace & give some real time to the beast. After 15 days of study, I gave another shot to gmat prep & was shocked again to have a score of 710. Though I knew that 710 was partially because of my luck, I wanted to know the critical factor that made my score jumped up. I had gone through the bsd_lover’s gmat prep analysis but wanted to have a little analysis of my own. So I decided to enter my gmat prep results data in an excel file, so that I may review the details later (No wonder being a finance guy, I love Excel). It took hardly 15 minutes to enter the data in the input sheet & then I analyzed the patterns of question recurrence, mistakes sequence & % of each question type. I did the same analysis for three of my gmat prep tests & gained some very useful insight. I planned to share that stuff at the forum but couldn’t do so mainly because of the fact that I used a very rough data file, which in no way was suitable to share. I have worked on that analysis tool of mine now so that it may get the required form to be shared. So attached is that tool. I hope the said tool will help you guys in knowing the gmat question patterns & the importance of first 10-13 questions.

My Findings

1.GMAT Prep Score 630

1. I got a fantastic Q score of 50 but a poor verbal score of 25 spoiled my overall score. 2. The Q score of 50 with 7 mistakes made me realized that the Q section of the gmat test has a soft corner. 3. Also, the first 10 Q questions had no mistake; hence this was also a big reason for high Q score.4. Having consistent mistakes in verbal section was the sole reason of low verbal score. It also made me clear that one can’t afford to have as many mistakes in verbal as one can in Q section.5. I also got the pattern and count of each question type as shown in the charts below.

2.GMAT Prep Score 710

1. A high jump in verbal score was only because of the fact that I got the first 14 verbal questions correct. In comparison to my 630 performance I only made 5 less mistakes but got a 15 point improvement in my verbal score.2. The quantitative drop to 47 was mainly because of consistent mistakes. The interesting point is that my 15 mistakes got me a Q score of 47 while the 15 mistakes in verbal section during my 630 experience got me a score of V25. 3. Total # of each question type was surprisingly the same as was in 630 experience.4. The question recurrence patterns were different in comparison to the ones I saw in the case of 630.

How to use the tool

1. Download the attached excel sheet.2. After taking the gmat prep & seeing the score on your screen, just note down that socre in your analysis tool or somewhere else. Don’t skip the score report screen, as when you click the “Next” button, the score report will never be available again.3. You need to fill in the “Data Input “sheet only, the other two sheets will be updated accordingly. This will hardly take 10-15 minutes.4. Fill in the "answer" & "question type" columns in Q & V sections along with the raw score cells of Q & V.5. You can then go through the two analysis sheets to find the details.

Imp Note:

1. I totally agree that gmat is a CAT and the number of right & wrong answers doesn’t make much difference but still there are some points that one need to remember & the biggest of which is the importance of first 10-12 questions.2. I am using some soft & standard chart colors of gmat club here in this post. The attached excel file has the regular chart graphics.

Edit: Version-2 of the tool added with a new analysis sheet showing the count of correct/incorrect answers of each question type.

It will be great, if anyone taking the gmat prep can fill the results in input sheet & paste the snapshots of the analysis sheets on this thread. This will help all of us in having an overview of different score patterns._________________

2. more than 10 mistakes in Verbal. Astalavista Baby!. Do the gmat again ! Ohh what a CAT Absolutely Correct

3. Initial 15 questions matter the most in both sections. Correct

4. Final 7 questions matter the least in both sections. Here I disagree a bit. Final 7 questions does matter but not too mcuh. But one cant ignore the importance. We should always try to give equal attention to the last 5-10 questions.